Obama’s State Department Promotes Muslim Cleric Who Backed Fatwa That Permitted The Killing Of U.S. Soldiers

The Department of State has again promoted the work of a controversial Muslim scholar who has endorsed a fatwa calling for the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, according to a series of tweets sent out by an official Twitter account that is tasked with combatting extremist ideologies.

In a series of five separate tweets on Wednesday, the State Department’s Think Again, Turn Away account, which works to combat radical Islam, promoted a recent NPR discussion with Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, a one-time vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, an organization founded by a Muslim Brotherhood leader “who has called for the death of Jews and Americans and himself is banned from visiting the U.S.,” according to reports.

Bin Bayyah is reported to have been one of multiple clerics who backed a 2004 fatwa, or religious decree, endorsing violent resistance against American soldiers fighting in Iraq.